


All Your Life

by Rikkamaru



Series: Blackbird [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Gen, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4461854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikkamaru/pseuds/Rikkamaru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truths are revealed, and Bellamy finds hope in a young girl as Clarke learns what really happened to her father all those years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Your Life

They found Jasper, and Clarke's knees were near weak with relief as she took him back, not acknowledging the boys as they took the panther back to feed the camp. She got him set up in the highest level of the dropship, and relaxed a little at the hug Monty gave her the moment Jasper was groaning but breathing and _alive_ in the small nest they had built for him. Unlike many others on the Ark, Clarke took comfort in the black wings that enfolded her in the hug.

Clarke returned down, and watched as the others gave away their safety for food, and hated Bellamy and Murphy all the more for it. Why they wanted so many people's deaths on their hands, she'd never understand.

She thanked Finn for some of the food he'd given, but she knew that she would need to keep her distance from then on. She didn't have time for romance, and if she did she certainly wouldn't want it from a peacock. Call her a hypocrite, but she would need proof before she'd remove that stereotype from his person in her mind.

But Jasper was getting worse, and Clarke had to cut away the infected flesh before it made him septic, and she did so even as everyone around her recoiled from his screams. She drove the knife through, and gritted her teeth against the sound and finally removed part of what would've killed him if given time.

And then the thorn in her side that was Bellamy Blake appeared, accompanied by his concerned sister.

"If you can't get the cure by the end of the day tomorrow, I will kill him," he threatened, promised, and Clarke narrowed her eyes at the boy that thought he could dictate her patient's life. "You can't make the tough decisions; I can."

Fire spread behind Clarke's eyes, and if looks could kill Bellamy would be dead ten times over. If she couldn't make the "hard decisions", what does he call the days she helped her mother shutdown someone's life support? What does he call her piercing someone's neck through with a scalpel, because they couldn't be saved and holding on would only make it worse? Clarke knew when a tough decision had to be made, and it certainly wasn't now.

And the only way he was getting his claws on Jasper's neck was if she was lying dead beside her patient, because like hell was the crow a lost cause.

She left with Wells and Finn, determined to return with the cure that will save Jasper's life. She waved briefly to the little girl she'd become acquainted with, Charlotte, who shyly waved back with her bird of paradise wings fluttering shyly behind her.

* * *

Was Bellamy in the wrong to take in little Charlotte in their hunting party?

He didn't think so. Sure, she was tiny and weak and probably the youngest Delinquent sent to the ground, but there was a stubbornness in her eyes, a brutality, a viciousness that could help her survive down here. So he gave her the knife, and he taught her the words he'd recited for so long in life that it'd become his mantra. "Screw you, I'm not afraid," she said, voice thin but growing louder, her wings opening a little more in an expression of confidence.

His feathers fluffed up, pleased, even as he tried to hide it. "We'll make a killer out of you yet," he said, jovial. They may have been hiding away from a fog that brought death and had already lost Atom – which was never something he would have wished upon the other boy, his cardinal red wings had always made him a point of teasing which he took well and gave back on – but maybe there was hope yet in what was to come.

On the other side of the forest, three people were huddled up, Clarke pressed up against Wells as she sobbed her apologies into his shoulder, her fears and doubts and suspicions finally relieved as the horrible truth came to life. "My mother killed my father, and you let me blame you for it."

She released an aching keen again as she said the words over and over, her wings struggling harder than ever to come out, to hide her from view as she broke down in front of her best friend and a boy she barely knew who was looking away in an attempt to save her dignity. Wells tried to shush her, rubbing her back and tucking her hair behind her ears. "Of course I did, Clarke. I'd do anything for you."

That only brought out a fresh wave of sobs, and this continued into the night, the Delinquents' leader finding hope in a small girl, the pariah and self-proclaimed monster cauterizing a wound that had never fully healed.

In the morning Clarke, Finn and Wells would rise and return to their trek back home, Wells' left wing tight around Clarke and Finn hovering on her other side, obviously not sure what to do as the ice princess persona broke and reformed right in front of him in a night. But even that iciness had abated somewhat, her face no longer as dark or conflicted. She still looked as if she found everyone around them annoying and not taking this as seriously as they could be, but she did look less ready to commit mass homicide.

* * *

_Jake Griffin had always been a large man, and not just physically. While he was broad shouldered and could carry his daughter on one shoulder in her youth, it was his presence that made him appear large to others._

_He knew how to hold himself, how to position his slimmer wings that made even Kain appear smaller when beside the engineer. He'd always been able to see how his presence affected others, and Abbie often joked that she was lucky he'd never had any interest in politics, or he'd have beaten her out of a job at this point._

_And he used this presence, this ability to make himself appear so much larger and deadlier than a peregrine falcon_ should _appear, to keep scrutiny away from the little light of his life. His daughter._

_A little girl with wings blacker than ink._

_He'd grown up around children with light wings, brown wings, and only two with black wings. He'd seen the way that others glanced at them, the way people refused to look at them like that would make their fear go away. People feared those with wings as black as death because they feared the unknown, and what greater unknown was there than what happened after death?_

_And so he did the best he could to hide her wings from everyone, even his wife. Abbie was an empathetic woman, but she was just as superstitious as anyone else on the Ark, and he wouldn't have her see the other part of Clarke's wings that was so alarming._

_Not if he could help it._

* * *

It was Charlotte's scream that brought him running, tripping over some of the vegetation as he ground to a halt beside her. His mouth, already opened to ask her what was wrong, snapped shut. There, lying on the ground and covered in boils and seared flesh, was Atom.

Half of the bright red feathers that normally decorated his wings were gone, leaving behind seared and boiling skin and those that remain were dirty and barely spread out on either side, as if he'd thought to flap his wings to either escape or remove the powder from his face, but the thought had come too late.

Bellamy took in his ragged breaths, his distorted eyes, and felt the rising of bile in his throat. And then he heard the words, repeating over and over in what was probably the loudest voice the other boy could muster. "Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. I – can't – _breathe_."

His wings flared out in terror. His flock, Atom was a part of his flock, and he'd have to kill him. With Jasper the words came easy. What was Jasper to him? Another set of hands, a meat shield, a brainy kid who was all bark and no bite. Expendable. But Atom was a member of his hunting party, a friend – granted a stupid friend that needed to not hit on Bellamy's sister, but a friend nonetheless – and an ally.

He was broken out of his thoughts when cool metal was pressed against his hand, and he gripped it tightly. He looked up to see Charlotte there, looking at him, his knife returned to him for this gruesome task. "Don't be afraid," she said, and the irony of those words weren't lost on him as his wings bristled in horror.

"Go back to camp," he ordered them all, staring at Charlotte to tell her she was included in that. They disappeared from view and Bellamy looked down at the other boy, blind, terrified, in so much pain.

"Bellamy, _please_ ," Atom gasped, and Bellamy's hands grew slick with sweat, gripping the knife tightly as if that would help him do the deed.

He couldn't…he couldn't…

The sound of a branch snapping got his head to snap around, and he stared at Clarke, her bag full and her expression frozen. She didn't bother glaring at him and settled on Atom's other side, her bag on the ground a few feet from her. "I heard screams," she said, explaining her presence.

"Charlotte found him." He told her, as her eyes flickered from one burn spot to another, looking at the bubbles under his skin and the cataracts in his eyes. "I sent her back to camp."

" _Please_ ," Atom begged, and he didn't have to say anything more as Clarke picked up his plea and checked vital areas frantically but still with a layer of professional calm. She looked up at Bellamy and shook her head, and he knew exactly what she was saying. Atom couldn't be saved. But he couldn't just _kill_ him.

The blonde seemed to pick that up as her eyes flickered down and away for a moment, considering, before she looked back down at Atom and gave him a sad smile. "Okay," she said gently, moving up slightly. "I'm going to help you, alright?"

Atom arched up a little in pain, gasping for air, but Clarke was there, stroking his hair, humming what sounded like a lullaby, taking Bellamy's knife out of his hand. He watched as she continued humming, watched as she slid the knife into a weak part of his throat, watched as she soothed Atom in his final rest. As he watched, she carefully removed a single feather from Atom wings, and tied a strand of hair around it.

Bellamy remembers, during some of the history classes that mentioned the creation of their wings, the theory that, had they been a warring people when they had their wings, they would've taken a feather from their enemies' wings as a trophy. And while that had never gone past theory, it was known that doctors on the Ark, when they had to give a patient a mercy kill, would take one of their feathers to wear. A sign of how many lives they had to take as a doctor.

And Bellamy now vaguely remembers seeing Clarke once before she was arrested, and the two feathers that had been twisted into her hair.

When they return to the drop site Clarke walks forward and meets briefly with Finn and Wells before continuing, mentioning something about boiling water. Bellamy grabs a passing arm. "Get Clarke whatever she needs," he tells them, and they nod back before hurrying to do as he said.

Miller appeared at his side, holding the stretcher with Atom laid out on it. "I'll go dig the grave," he said, his red-tailed hawk wings drooping in an expression of sorrow and Bellamy nodded back.

His heart ached as Octavia fought her way forward, moving around him to the covered body nearby. He knew the moment she saw Atom's body as her wings flared in shock before drooping so much the tips may have very well been touching the ground. "I did everything I cou-"

"Don't," she said angrily, her composure forcefully put back as her wings pressed tightly to her side. She shouldered past him to return to Jasper's side, but he didn't fault her for it.

Murphy lingered by his side, and he clung to the stability in his leadership. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes, everyone's here," he answered in a bored manner, but his condor wings were closed to his sides in displeasure.

"Jasper?" he asked specifically, because it wouldn't do for the person their only medic risked her life for to die before they could save him.

"Still alive, barely. I tried to kill him but your psycho sister –"

A red haze covered Bellamy's eyes and when he came to again, his hands were clenching the collar of Murphy's shirt. "My what?! My what?!" He stared straight into Murphy's eyes, letting him know that he would kill him if he said the wrong thing here.

And Murphy was many things, but he wasn't an idiot. "Your little sister," he said, both as a sign of submission and a subtle accusation.

Bellamy didn't care. "Yeah, my little sister. Got anything else you want to say about her?"

Murphy's eyes burned. "Nothing," he clipped out, and Bellamy dropped him back onto the ground.

"That's what I thought."

**Author's Note:**

> I was planning for this to go through all of the Charlotte stuff but, as you can see, that did not end up happening. Which is fine, I had more to say about Atom's death than I had anticipated.


End file.
